En marge de l'enquête

By the way he talks Humphrey Bogart thinks he's still Sam Spade and that Lizabeth Scott is Mary Astor but "Dead Reckoning" is no "Maltese Falcon". Nevertheless this convoluted film-noir is still extremely enjoyable if a little hard to follow. It was directed by John Cromwell in 1947 and while Mr Cromwell was no John Huston he was no slouch either so the film moves at a fairly professional clip and is never less than entertaining.

If there's a problem it probably lies in the over-egged script and the purple prose, courtesy of no less than five writers and that includes producer Sidney Biddell who came up with the original story. Bogart is excellent as always and there's nice work from Morris Carnovsky as a bad guy but Lizabeth Scott was certainly no Mary Astor and at times you wonder if her 'bad acting' is bad acting or just 'bad acting', if you get my drift. For some reason the film isn't much seen these days which is a pity because, while no classic, it really is a lot of fun.

So, why does war hero Johnny Drake (William Prince) take a fast train away from the nation's highest military honor. It's an intriguing premise and the next 90 minutes tells us why. The movie's got noir icons like Bogart, Lizabeth Scott, and Morris Carnovski, plus a mysterious past, a smoky night club, and a barbecued corpse. In short, this ought to be classic noir, but in my little book it's not.

I've got two basic gripes. First, Scott may look the part, but she's no Jane Greer (Out of the Past. 1947). Above all, noir's spider women have to be good actresses so that we never know their true feelings. That trickiness means we can get suckered along with the hero. But it also means we get suckered against our better judgement because we and the hero suspect their sincerity all along. Scott's performance lacks that crucial element of trickiness-- hers is essentially a one note performance with no hint of a gap between how she feels and how she behaves. Thus, there's no real revelation at the end because she looks and acts the same as before. As a result, the betrayal is all in the script and crucially not where it belongs-- in the performance.

Speaking of the script-- the banter is too cute by-half. Practically every line out of Bogart's mouth shouts clever writer's device, whether it's baseball metaphors (strike one, strike two, etc), car metaphors, or the various other false rhetorical notes. For me, it gets tiresome, Bogart or no Bogart. Then too, Carnovski's queasy racketeer is made to enunciate his lines with perfectly parsed diction. Of course, that makes him a more interesting character and criminal mastermind. But, this again amounts to a device that calls attention to the words being said instead of to who is saying them or how the plot is helped along. It seems to me that a good script carries a story without competing with it.

These are my two main gripes. There are other reasons I think the movie doesn't get beyond second-rate noir, such as uninspired direction (whether Cromwell's name is elevated above the title or not), overly long love scenes (after the point has been made), and menacing figures who don't really menace (Carnovski & Miller). Together these undercut the strong points, such as the train scenes (how Prince & Bogart have bonded) or certain good story points (the unidentifiable corpse, the poignant last scene).

In passing-- this is not a gripe, but I suspect Columbia was using Bogart to build Scott into another Lauren Bacall. The two look somewhat alike, sound somewhat alike, and both built careers on appearance and attitude rather than ability. Here Bogart ends up calling Scott's character "Mike", just the sort of sidekick affection he shows for real life wife Bacall in their several movies together. Nothing obvious hangs on this, just a surmise that the movie may have been shaped for more than one purpose. However that may be, the movie amounts to okay but unmemorable noir entertainment.

Dead Reckoning appeared too early to have worn out and begun to recycle film noir's conceits and conventions, but already it has a tired, seen-it-all feel to it. Its director, the generally reliable John Cromwell (who three years later was to helm the great-grandmaw of women-behind-bars pix, Caged) works here with a by-the-numbers detachment that keeps the movie as limp and soggy as its "Gulf City" locale.

Returning vet Humphey Bogart, en route to Washington with a war buddy who's about to be awarded some Big Medal, is baffled when said buddy suddenly takes it on the lam. His investigation into what happened and why takes him to a seamy town on America's south coast where, in a morgue, he finds his friend's body, charred beyond recognition. He also meets up with Lizabeth Scott (as Coral Chandler, or "Dusty," or, even, "Mike"), a canary in a local nitery run by heavy Morris Carnovsky. It seems she and the late pal were something of an item, and she teams up with Bogart to get to the truth.

Or does she? The most problematic aspect of the film is that dealing with Scott -- game blonde or femme fatale? It's as if the scriptwriters or studio heads couldn't make up their mind about her, or as if alternative endings were contemplated, or even filmed. This doesn't help the viewer, whose empathy seems always to be out of kilter with what's happening in the plot. And this can't be written off as a teasing ambiguity -- it's a gross failure of filmmaking. So the sentimental, "redemptive" ending in the hospital ward, with high-flown talk of parachute jumps, tries to have it both ways. Well, it can't.

John Cromwell was a director that aimed to please, as demonstrated by the films he left behind.

"Dead Reckoning" is a film that is satisfying while one is watching it, but later on, in retrospect, we question a lot of what we have seen as the plot doesn't make sense in many ways. All the elements of the Film Noir genre can be found in it. We have a war hero Rip, who is investigating the disappearance of his buddy, who he watches running away from a train in order not to testify with him in Washington. The action takes us to a Southern coastal town, where supposedly, the escapee has gone to. Little prepares Rip to find his friend burned to death in the morgue.

Thus begins a tale of deception that has lots of interesting twists. The film benefits from its two stars, who play a game that on the surface seems to be one thing, and with a surprising twist at the end, turns out to be something else.

Humphrey Bogart excelled in movies like this. He is tough, but he has time to have a great rapport with Dusty, the former singer at the local night club. Lisabeth Scott plays the siren with an air of mystery. It comes as a big surprise what happens at the end.

Morris Carnovsky, a great theater actor of the time, is Martinelli, the crooked owner of the night club. Also a young William Prince plays the man who ran away to find a tragic fate by doing so.

One of Bogart's best, a brutal Film Noir with a surprising ending, & filled with sharp, witty dialog. Lizabeth has never looked more beautiful than here, & although her acting ability is overmatched by Bogart, she would improve in her later films & she's adequate in this role. There's glimpses of the basic "Maltese Falcon" plot here: Bogey searches out & seeks revenge for his partner, even some of the dialog is similar in that respect. If you like Bogart or if you like Film Noir, you can't go wrong with this one! And by the way, this is a REAL Film Noir, not in the newer use of this phrase (recently, people have been calling any B&W crime drama made in the 1940s a "Film Noir"). This film has all the classic Film Noir elements: lots of shadows & stark contrasts (in the beginning, Bogart speaks from shadows so dark that one can hardly see his face), a spoken narrative, a "hero" who works outside the law, a murder mystery, & a heroine who may not be a heroine.